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Everyone has to learn about sex somehow. Today, billions of people are learning about it from porn.

In a citizen science project, thousands of pet dogs are helping scientists to understand what happens to memory and cognition in old age.

To the ancient Greeks, exotic animals were proof of mythological creatures. To the ancient Romans, they were oddities and adversaries.

Hundreds of these cannabis-related chemicals now exist, both natural and synthetic, inspiring researchers in search of medical breakthroughs.

In 1924, Edwin Hubble found proof that the Milky Way isn’t the only galaxy in the Universe.

All American and European eels originate in the same place.

Ancient humans may have evolved to slumber efficiently — and in a crowd.

Rich data on the global state of our feathered friends presents plenty of bad news — but also some bright spots.

In ancient Rome, collective bathing was the norm. In the West today, it’s the exception — and that’s too bad.

“Carpe diem” was only one part of Horace’s poem Odes 1.11.

The idea is to study the thing itself — be it a work of literature, death, family, a car, a vaccine, or the hospital — without preconceived notions, trendy easy answers, or dogma imposed on it.

Math can explain why your laces spontaneously come untied — and how to stop it.

The world’s “most produced living playwright” wins out over other contestants, including Salman Rushdie and Margaret Atwood.

Claims of a “loneliness epidemic” aren’t based on robust data. Loneliness might be a problem, but it’s not worse than it was in the past.

Tikal, one of the biggest cities the Maya ever built, was home to a vast and flourishing society.

A classical equivalent to Chanel No. 5.

Compared to people who took a placebo, the brains of those who took caffeine pills had a temporarily smaller gray matter volume.

Even in the very early Universe, there were heavy, supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies. How did they get so big so fast?

A longstanding mismatch between theory and experiment motivated an exquisite muon measurement. At last, a theoretical solution has arrived.

A 1.5-million-year-old hominin bone shows signs that the victim was eaten by lions — and humans.

A true scientific view of if, where, and when extraterrestrial life exists is within our grasp thanks to biosignatures and technosignatures.

It’s the paradoxical observation that the more we try to process, the less we actually can.

A combination of factors make the weather at New Hampshire’s Mount Washington arguably the most brutal in the world.

Over the past 50 years, 27 leap seconds have been added to our time.

A wave of innovation is coursing through the nuclear industry — but ingrained opposition is the biggest roadblock.

These astounding inventions show that civilizations of the past were a lot more advanced than we might have thought.

Grab a sword, a small plate, and a young child. We’ve got a demon to summon.

According to Tolkien, fantasy requires a deep imagination known as “sub-creation.” And the genre reflects a fundamental truth of being human.

Daydreaming can be a pleasant pastime, but people who suffer from maladaptive daydreaming are trapped by their fantasies.

The carnival spirit was in full swing when the priests got wasted and made indecent gestures while dressed like pimps.